Throughout eight squalid years of Scottish devolution, I have been irritated by the frequency with which London-based commentators misrepresent Holyrood as a glorious example of progress. Now, with Scotland facing the consequences of the least competent election conducted in Britain since the advent of universal suffrage, my irritation has turned to fury.

An election in which 100,000 ballot papers were deemed invalid, and MSPs were elected with majorities smaller than the number of spoiled votes in their constituency, deserves to be called a fiasco. Instead one eminent columnist terms it an "all-singing, all-dancing carnival of democracy", and wonders why England is not allowed to enjoy similar arrangements.

Well, if Scotland enjoyed devolution, Scots would not have voted in unprecedented numbers for the party most determined to destroy it. The Scottish National party's victory, while tainted by the absence of certainty that it actually won, at least implies widespread disillusion with the scheme Tony Blair implemented.

Clever though my old boss Donald Dewar was, he was as stubborn as Margaret Thatcher. Dewar ridiculed Tam Dalyell for daring to describe his pet project as "a motorway to independence with no exits". Then, on the basis of no evidence at all, and calculated ignorance of Canadian experience, he insisted that home rule would strengthen Britain.

It was one of a series of promises that ignored reality. Devolution would make government more efficient and dilute the power of traditional political elites. It would promote growth, boost confidence and reform public services. These were the pledges for which Scots voted in the 1997 referendum. They were the basis on which Mr Blair - initially a sceptic - consented to the Scotland Act against his better judgment.

None of them has come to pass. And now the most ill considered aspect of Dewar's scheme - an electoral system in which the only way to beat Labour is to vote for separatism - has done its worst. Even if the full recount that is the only proper response to Thursday's chaos is permitted, Scotland still faces a period of profound political uncertainty.

Idealists depict the hybrid additional member system (AMS) of election used to elect MSPs as a means to express the true wishes of the people. The Scottish Labour party's view was always less elevated. It was included in the Scotland Act because several party leaders preferred Liberals to socialists and believed AMS would guarantee a permanent Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition.

Instead, it has created a morass in which calamitous counting arrangements are to be followed by weeks of legal challenges and coalition wrangling. The most plausible outcome is that Scotland will get a government nobody voted for, committed to a programme that did not appear in any manifesto.

This is not what John Smith meant when he called devolution "the settled will of the Scottish people". It is an aggravation of the uncertainty that, throughout the devolved years, has seen Scotland underperforming the rest of the UK economically and squandering vast subsidies on inefficient, unreformed public services.

While insisting on the total recount without which the Scottish election results can never be trusted, Gordon Brown should accept the real verdict of Thursday's ballot. The reason Scots supported Alex Salmond but remain opposed to independence is simple. Scotland still wants home rule, but it does not want the inefficient, nepotistic little parliament Labour devised in the belief that it would cement its stranglehold on power.

The SNP win presents a golden opportunity for this future British prime minister from a country soon to be governed by anti-British separatists. Britain's new constitution is a barely started work-in-progress. He should summon a full UK constitutional convention to answer the West Lothian question, revise the Barnett formula and create a system capable of governing efficiently.

As for the notion that instability and chaos are fun, it only applies to those rich and talented enough not to rely on public services or conventional employment. Few Scottish Labour or SNP voters fit into that category.

Read more about the May 3 elections in Scotland, Wales and England here